


headmaster's ritual

by dabblingDilettante



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Analysis, Character Study, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Abuse, Sibling Incest, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28140942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante
Summary: Every time is the first time.  There was no first time.  Eternity could not have a first time.  Because what could be eternal if not this.  What could be so eternal as this moment, in this coffin, with him above her.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	headmaster's ritual

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisjustout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisjustout/gifts).



> title is a smiths song because thats my big song that i think about sexual abuse in a school setting and its kind of hard to do a summary for a story like this.
> 
> To my giftee - embarrassingly enough, the Anthy & Akio story you requested is the kind of thing I've been wanting to write for a long time. I thought it was sad to think that there's people who would think the Rose Bride deal is a "magical" role that foists Anthy into that behaviour. Considering how particular her writing is. Anyway. Hope I did okay and I mostly hope you don't hate this.

“I'm not hungry,” Anthy would say.

And Akio would respond, “Nonsense.”

If anyone wanted to complain that all Anthy knew how to make was shaved ice, a nothing of water with sugar to dissolve on your tongue, they could all come to Akio instead for a filling meal. He could make anything anyone else wanted. A full bodied stew, an easy relaxed stir fry, a lovely home-made hot pot, bread and cakes and puddings, any food a person could imagine. Akio could make it. Whether or not you wanted to eat, he'd find a way to make you accept. Find at least one thing you couldn't say no to, or keep asking you to eat until you finally accepted to make him stop.

So, simply, Anthy stopped liking any food at all. Shaved ice melted on her tongue before anything could dare to touch her stomach. Kept alive like a hummingbird, feeding on sugar.

“How adorable,” Akio said. He wafted a hand through the air, knocking through the rising smoke of another culinary failure Anthy created. “I suppose you enjoy doing this?”

The ingredients were easy. Flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder, paprika, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, olives and strawberry stems, all combined with olive oil. A recipe for an unpleasant smell and a burnt mess in a cast iron pan. A mess that would keep her up for hours cleaning.

“I'm sorry,” she lied.

Akio's hands pressed down on her shoulders. “I would be unable to overstate my disappointment in my dear sister if that were the case.” His palms slid down her arms. Anthy's stare burned further through the metal pan. Unusable garbage now. “But I would be a terrible brother if I did not have forgiveness in my heart, at the very least.”

“Of course,” Anthy replied.

* * *

|   
---|---  
  
``It always hurt a little at first.

Anthy even took time out of the day to smuggle lube into her room, knowing what was to come, but there was always some pain. Even with outward lubrication. 

Akio always went a little too quickly at first, like he was desperate to start.

It wasn't something she understood well. It wasn't something she bothered to take her time to understand. Her brother was unknowable, after all. 

He was the dead prince. He was so much more than she could ever hope to be. Or so she heard.

Above her, he panted her name. Over and over again. Like it was a ritual to behold. Anthy maintained her blank stare. 

Akio wanted, always, to draw something out of her. It was pathetic. It was amusing. 

She thought, perhaps if she bothered to touch him beforehand, then she could circumvent some of the pain.

Maybe convince him to allow her to apply the lubricant herself. But she wasn't one to initiate or ask for things when it came to sex. 

It would give him the wrong idea. Get him excited.

Each thrust became a little less painful as he went on. He rolled his hips into her, clinging to her thighs, and Anthy stared at the ceiling past his head. 

Fake constellations stared back at her.

A reflection of falsehoods. She allowed herself a small smile while Akio's eyes were closed, his face buried in her neck.

Anthy heard a bell ding in the other room. A knock followed it.

"Brother," she whispered. "Your fiancé is here."

"One more minute," he groaned.

"You said you'd cook for her."

"And I will," he muttered. "Once I'm done with you."

| 

"Do you smell something?"

Akio's fiancé turned her nose up to the room around her.

Next to Anthy, her brother smiled, pristine, at this round's new winner. "Nothing at all."

"I could just swear there was something rotting," she muttered.

Anthy drank the tea in her hands. It was rare for people to notice.

"It might be yesterday's trash," Akio said. "Anthy." His eyes landing on her. "I asked you to take that out, did I not?"

"Of course," Anthy responded. She lied, "I apologize, dear brother."

"You should eat," he said, now to his fiancé. "I made a new dish. An old friend of mine apprenticed in a French kitchen and offered me a few of his secrets."

Her face lit up at the dish, glazed and warm with a savory sauce to match. She asked, "What kind of meat did you use here?"

"It's a secret," Akio said.

Anthy reached over the plate, pointed, to reach the sugar bowl. Out of her, he cut the flesh, what little muscle was left among bone. 

One day, she'd run out, and her brother would be left with nothing to serve his guests. His betrotheds. 

But today, there was enough liver to make into a delicious pâté, and enough meat to slice thin for a quickly cooked meal.

"I'm so jealous," his fiance sighed. "I wish my brother bothered to learn to cook as well as you can, Akio."

At that, the woman laughed. "You'd think he wasn't interested in finding a wife! At least I know that Anthy's being treated well." 

The woman beamed at Anthy. Anthy smiled blithely in return.

"Oh yes." Anthy could feel her eyes sliding off the woman's face. "Like no one else."  
  
* * *

The problem wasn't that no one was around at the right time. People were always around. Someone would always be able to see if they bothered to look. But all metaphors and allegories aside.

There was no excuse Anthy could make. No response or action. What Akio wanted, he'd get. He always did.

Just as food was not to her taste, sex was an ambivalence at best. Akio had given up on trying to involve her in any meaningful capacity long before. He still played the role of seductor – as he did with every person who entered his lair. It was a ritual. A play by play. The only way he had to get himself hard, she would allow herself to think some days, if in dire need of laughter.

When he was on top of her, what stood out to her was the smell. The sweat dropping on her chest, as if he was exerting himself in any meaningful way. There was no sensation of the smell of skin. Just the smell of sweat and his penis and his cologne. As if anything would cover up the smell of how disgusting this was. Her legs hurt no matter what position he insisted on that specific day, but if nothing else, he couldn't make her move if she didn't want to. Anthy never wanted to. People could call her a doll, but it was all part of an elaborate stage show regardless. It was interesting to watch from outside her cage of a body what her brother seemed to find so titillating. Amusing that an adult man could find dead fish eyes and limp limbs arousing enough to ejaculate.

“I have a test to study for tomorrow,” she muttered, just barely audible over his grunts.

“You're failing regardless,” he panted. Anthy could feel her thighs cramping as he dug his fingers into her skin. “Don't worry about pointless things.”

She wasn't worried. Not about that. It wasn't as though school mattered for someone who couldn't leave regardless. Still.

Even after Anthy showered, she could still smell his sweat like he was hovering behind her bed. He'd fallen asleep like a baby the moment she'd walked away. In the kitchen, along the island table, was the mess he'd left behind in the midst of cooking. The midst of eating. His fiancé hadn't even bothered to finish the food, after the so-called praise. That made Anthy smile. She scraped the remains of her flesh off the plates into the garbage disposal, listening to the sink chew up what was left of her. Akio didn't like her doing it because that was what would break it. Then they'd have to call a mechanic or plumber up to fix it, and who knew how long it would take for them to leave. On the floor, though, was the woman's underwear, left behind in a rush. Anthy stared between it and the dirty plates in her hands for a moment before throwing both into the trash for burning.

* * *

Anthy had read plenty about sex. That power was sex and sex was power, and that seemed to match with what Akio believed about the act. But there was something worse behind the way he sought her out. Different from the way he would groom and play with children in the garden.

He knew she was watching that too.

| 

All men are not rapists. That was something Anthy was quite positive about.

It wasn't particularly positive. It was more that she would not give credit to Akio for being one of many. She wouldn't give him the pleasure of being a typical man. Many men did desire control. She could admit that much. But how they enacted that control did vary.

Saionji was a perfect example.  
  
---|---  
  
Sometimes she wondered if it was all another mind game of his. To show how powerless she was. To show how normal she was.

The children he'd grow tired of so quickly. Adult women who would visit were favors he had to pay. His fiancee – multiple girls, one girl, Anthy didn't care to think about. Play toys.

But he wanted Anthy and that was inexorable. Disgusting as he knew he was. As he knew she thought him. But that made him come back more, aroused at the mere sight of her, and she knew it. And it made her laugh, quiet and private and dead. The worst joke ever told.

| 

"Anthy," he said, proud and self-assured. "I've brought you flowers."

She looked at the bouquet with some derision. It was flowers cut from her own garden. Of course. Without any skill, either. She smiled at him.

"Thank you. They're beautiful." It wasn't a lie. She'd grown them herself.

Saionji's fixation was not sexual and it was not on her, and in some ways, it was a relief. He could hit her, certainly, but the individual spite of a single immature boy in the face of everything else she knew was laughable, at best.  
  
“What's so funny,” Akio rasped.

She kept laughing, eyes closed to the world.

“Stop laughing.” He forced his hand over her mouth and nose, his other hand digging into her breast and shoulder. He was so much bigger than her. She couldn't stop. “I said stop!” he yelled, pathetic. Pathetic as a naked man above, erect inside her, thrusting even as he could not stop her quiet autonomy.

| 

Anthy appreciated Saionji because he was pathetic and he knew it. Unlike her brother. Everyone could tell Saionji was mistreating her. If they saw bruises and knew they were put there by a man, they would know it was abuse, and that was almost acceptable. Because Saionji was undesirable and angry and quick to anger. The platonic ideal of the abuser.

"Saionji," Anthy whispered under her breath, tears edging into her eyes. "It hurts."

Shock flashed onto his face, and his grip was gone, his fingers no longer digging into her wrist. She almost smiled.

"Anthy," he murmured. "I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me."  
  
“I'm so sorry, my dear brother,” she mumbled through the fingers he shoved in her mouth. “I just had a sad thought.”

“What,” he spat.

“That there are men who can only get aroused by little girls,” she said. Calm. “Or even their family members.” She hummed. "People always make fun of that Nanami girl. But I thought it was a little tragic. She doesn't know how bad it it yet."

Anthy could feel him shudder at his words, but he did not stop till he finished. Only then tearing away from her like she was poison in his hands.

| 

"My brother," she said, biting her thumb nail. Anthy angled her face just so her lenses hid her eyes and left a shadow over the rest of her face. "If he finds out, I don't know what he'd do."

"Your brother!" Saionji gasped, louder this time. He was so melodramatic. "Anthy, I do not dream of shaming you or myself before your family."

He drew back, bowing sharply. "If he discovers our relationship, I will do everything in my power to appeal to his better nature."

In a way, it was almost sad. She placed her hand on the back of his head, petting him as if he were a dog. If Anthy could even pinpoint what sadness was supposed to mean at this point. That the one man who people bothered to rescue her from was the one man she had no issues dealing with.

"I'm sure," she said, smiling in some mirth.  
  
* * *

A greenhouse was meant to cultivate flowers. Fertilizer and water and sunlight, all for the sake of growing a bud far enough to be cut down by a blade. Rotting flesh to be the groundwork for pruned roses.

Akio could not get out of bed.

Anthy knocked on his door and entered before he could give a response. She carried a bowl of shaved ice, daintily flavored with grape syrup. Inside, he laid sideways upon his bed, hair strewn across the sheets, the back of his hand poised upon his forehead as though cameras were waiting for a shot.

“Anthy,” he whispered. “Anthy, I'm so sorry.”

“I know, brother,” she answered. Prim. “Here. For your fever.”

He knocked the shaved ice out of her hands and grabbed her wrist. “No,” he said. “No, you can't forgive me. It's all because of me.” And now the tears started. Pathetic and young and unsecure. “If not for my sake, you would not have been rejected by the world.”

Her hands, at least, were cool. She allowed him the illusion that she was the one placing her hands on the sides of his face. His face was terribly close, but that was not what was so terrible. Anthy was not good with faces in the first place, and Akio had never looked like Dios. No. It was the touch of his lips against first her forehead. It was the giddy joy at affection, the memory of her brother as her eyes closed, of the days he'd come home to her and hug her tight in his arms as if the reason he worked so hard was so he could return to her. So he could teach her how to cook and so she could tell him about the animals she found in the garden today and show him how good she was at taking care of the gardens and their home.

But then his lips moved to hers and what memory of joy she felt turned brittle and turned her rib cage to ash. Because those were memories long gone and she had been dead for a very long time now. She could feel his spittle. His tongue, but she did not open her mouth.

“Don't leave me,” he whispered.

“...I'll take care of you,” she answered. Like he pretended to do for her.

“It's rotten work,” he said.

“Oh." His words sent a jolt of hatred through her like the blades that tore through her, like the stabbing pain through her privates when she laid alone in bed trying to sleep. Anthy smiled. “I didn't realize you knew.” She could not read expressions well, but his silence and wide eyes said enough to her. “Did you think I was trying to quote Orestes? Of the two cousins?” She kissed Akio's forehead. “Charming. You always find the most fitting lines.”

* * *

Anthy didn't remember a first time. Something eternal couldn't have a first time. Instead, she remembered two questions.

“Do you love me?” Dios had once asked.

And Anthy, the young sister, said, “Yes. Of course I do.”

Then her brother asked, “Would you do anything for me?”

And the witch, burning under the strain of the world's hatred, with only one person deigning to give his love to her, said, “Anything at all.”

The only reason she remembered at all was because Akio asked over and over again. From the moment he transformed from a prince into an adult. There was a question of how long he'd intended for this. Or if it was just a natural male indulgence.

If the fact that he could no longer be a prince because of her meant he had no choice but to be a man, and being a man meant being unable to control his sexual appetite.

And as she was the witch who hid him away and forced him to stop being a prince, she had to be the one to accept the brunt of his reality.

It was abuse. Anthy knew that well. She had eternity to read in a coffin and that meant she knew more about the subject than she cared to know. 

And perhaps, to an outsider, it would seem that she was abusing him in return. But truly, it was the game. If she could make Akio realize he didn't want to be there first. 

If she could make Akio move first. If she could make her brother show his true hand. If she could turn the board in her favor, because if she could twist it to where the world saw Akio instead of her. 

Or if she could even simply. Force him to abandon her. Then their relationship would be void. He would feel no more need to play at this brother-sister game. No more guilt about not being able to be a prince to the girl who should have mattered most.

And if he sought out eternity to this point, for this abuse, she could give him the twisted remains of it. Because if she could not escape, and he could not leave, what was it but eternity. 

Anthy could be Akio's eternity. The memory and mark of his cruelty, his twisted monstrous nature, and what he had done to her.

In the duels, there were no winners. Only losers. She knew that. But Anthy kept up her silent duel with her brother. A duel that had no end in sight.

| 

Utena was the one to sit between Anthy and Wakaba, like a warding charm. 

As if she knew, naturally, it needed to be done. 

Anthy fed cookies to Chuchu, Utena ate school-bought bread, and Wakaba fussed over the boxed lunches she'd brought for herself and Utena.

"I'm so tired of this class section," Wakaba whined.

"I dunno," said Utena. "It seems pretty useful, right? When we're out in the real world, it'll probably be important to know how to help out people who are being abused."

"I know that," Wakaba said. 

"It's just so boring. Everyone knows what abuse is. You don't need to be taught in a class to know that incest is wrong. I don't know why they're wasting out time on this."

Beside Anthy, Chuchu stopped eating.

"Well, even if that's true, it's still good for us to know these things! I'm sure a lot of people who are being abused probably don't realize it. If we learn about that, then we can do a lot more for others!" Utena said it like an easy truth. 

An enjoyable reality. Instead of cookies in her hands, Anthy had a needle and thread, and she was sewing a pattern into needlepoint.

"Why wouldn't they realize it?" Anthy asked. When the two looked at her, she smiled. "I'm sorry, I didn't take notes."

"Well, if they knew they were being abused, they wouldn't stay," said Wakaba, rolling her eyes with the statement.

"Why?" Anthy asked.

"What do you mean?" Utena asked. She said it slow, like she was at the brink of a realization. But she didn't cross the precipice.

"I apologize. I should rephrase the question." There was tea in Anthy's hands now. A calming effect. "What difference would knowing make?"

Wakaba was the one to break the silence with a scoff. "Everything, clearly. Then they could call a hotline or ask a friend for help or go to a doctor. You should pay more attention in class."

Anthy laughed and took a long draft from her tea. "Do you smell something?"  
  
---|---  
  
* * *

This was the reality.

Anthy did not like to eat food. So, in order to not worry her friends. The people in her life. Her family, her school mates, her teachers. She hid it away. The rice was shoved into the edges of cushions. Her vegetables were hidden in her closets and unused shoes. The meat was draped in sauce and stuck to the bottom of the table and the cabinets. Akio found out, and tried to stop her hoarding. Stop her from making places to hide things away. But she still found ways. Even when he made sure to feed her himself.

But though she hid the food, it began to rot. As all things dead and gone tend to do.

Grapes fermented and fish was overwhelmed with the stench of hideous bacteria. And in one way, she was afraid. People would know. People would find it. People would investigate the smell.

And in another way.

She was glad.

People would notice. People would ask. People would investigate. They could no longer avoid what she was hiding. They could no longer avoid what Akio tried to erase.

But no one noticed the smell. No one spoke of it. They lived their lives, every day, as if nothing was different. Even Akio seemed unaware of the stench. Everyone but her. The smell always a part of her. Rot in her senses even as she went to sleep.

* * *

This was the reality.

No one noticed the smell of Akio's sweat upon her. The smell of him that was so strong when they had sex and afterward rose no flags for anyone around her. The smell of his penis and the way it made her mouth taste like death made no one recoil in fear or disgust or concern. Or maybe they knew. Maybe they knew, and they'd decided to live with it. The smell that brought her back in her waking moments to things that happened when she pretended she was asleep. The taste of salt and the texture of something inedible on her tongue that would make her vomit if she had a stomach any longer.

Rape didn't matter as long as it wasn't the wrong person. And incest only existed as a joke. 

Just like Nanami was a joke. Until the moment she found out it wasn't a joke and until the moment that Akio poisoned Touga enough that he would try to do the same to her.

Incest was only a problem because of the sister.

Incest was never a fault of the brother.

Wind sped past as he drove faster, and faster, and faster. Anthy gasped in pain. It hurt. It never really stopped hurting. But Akio kept speeding up. His foot pressing the pedal down to the floor, trying to push through the bottom of the car, and he was talking. It wasn't his fault, after all. It was the world, and the fact that they hurt her, the fact that they rejected her, the fact that they hated her, that was what hurt her. It wasn't him. What could he do. He was already driving. They were always driving. He couldn't stop driving in the middle of going to fast.

"Does it hurt, Anthy?"

He couldn't just pull out and stop and control himself. He couldn't stop touching her, couldn't stop shoving fingers inside her when she was just trying to sleep, couldn't stop going long after she felt dry and all he could do was shudder inside her. Couldn't stop himself from digging his fingers into the back of her head when he managed to push her into oral. He couldn't stop himself from being attracted to her. He couldn't stop himself from thinking about her and he couldn't help himself if it meant he was aroused. He couldn't just make himself not hard. It was hard. It was so difficult, and she was making it so hard for him, and Anthy could scream, but she wouldn't.

"I'm not the one causing it. It's the world."

Couldn't, maybe, but really. No one could hear her. This far deep and this far gone. If she could have an honest conversation with him, maybe Anthy could tell Akio that if he was the end of the world, then. Everything he was doing was just as bad as what the world had done to her. That he couldn't just fuck all his problems away, like the older women who came to him on the weekends for a break from their every day lives. She couldn't feel bad for him. Even when he cried, it wasn't such a matter of his pain. It was a matter of the choice she'd already made.

* * *

This was the reality.

Anthy enjoyed watching Akio squirm under her eyes.

She enjoyed making Utena doubt her words.

Enjoyed making Wakaba feel like a fool in front of Utena.

Enjoyed turning Nanami into the campus joke.

Enjoyed watching Saionji give himself up for nothing.

It was the only pleasure she could allow herself. The only thing that meant not opening herself up to someone else.

* * *

This was the reality.

Eternity did not exist because Anthy could not exist.

Anthy could not exist because her experience could not exist.

Anthy's experience could not exist because Akio was not an abuser.

Akio was not an abuser because incest was not abuse.

Incest was not abuse because incest did not exist.

Incest did not exist because Anthy did not exist.

But she did exist.

So the trauma existed.

But it had an end.

That was why eternity did not exist.

Because the coffin doors could open.

* * *

The day Anthy left was interminable. 

The moment Utena was cast out - the moment she left - it was set into stone.

But the time in between then and there was a fog in Anthy's mind.

To put it simply.

One day, she woke up, and decided it was the day. On a whim, really. She sat at the precipice of a coffin and a new world, watching the people pace back and forth between. Anthy was dead to the world she'd once grown up in. But Utena had made a new world with her own hands. Anthy's belief in her had made a new world. Where Akio only lived to revive the corpse of what once was.

When she jumped, Anthy did so without expecting to be caught on the other side.

**Author's Note:**

> "I have vanished, yet I am petrified. I have vanished, yet I still live. I exist. I am here. I exist."
> 
> I like those lines for Utena in the final episode. Her duel song. Yet it is also Anthy's duel song, isn't it. The final duel is not between Akio and Utena, but rather between Anthy and Utena. As Utena pushes Akio away like the helpless background shadow player he is. "I exist." Anthy has been shunt to the side. Her experience ignored. Her experience erased. The existence of the very thing that harms her. But she exists.
> 
> The moment when Utena slams her fist into the ground. When she takes the ring that Dios gave her and repurposes it, because she only has it due to the promise she made to reach out to Anthy. The solidarity of two girls in separate coffins, trying to open up to each other. Anyway. Anthy is. The most. ...I love her. So much.


End file.
